Lead Automated Marketing Process: Lead Facing Process Overview

An overview of the LAMP lead generation and lead nurturing processes. LAMP is an out of the box, lead generation process, supported by technology, for SMEs. Cost effective, and payment on leads or on
…

An overview of the LAMP lead generation and lead nurturing processes. LAMP is an out of the box, lead generation process, supported by technology, for SMEs. Cost effective, and payment on leads or on users.

This presentation is an overview of the basic LAMP-360 proposition for lead facing processes. This presentation was written by Julian Poulter, CEO LAMP-360. 1st Version November 2011

Agenda

The lead generation and sales process is ideally a single process in a business. A lead is identified, qualified, support, nurtured and progressed until it becomes a customer. The customer is then supported and developed, more business is generated or eventually the client is lost or does not renew. In most organisations the responsibility for the lead generation is marketing, leads are then passed to sales who qualify and close them – if only it were that simple in reality!!

Marketing and sales are usually very different roles and in many companies these are different departments that can have a variety of relationships!In sales, a clear target is the norm and sales executives are often under great pressure at quarter ends to deliver results. As a result, any colder leads are generally ignored at this time. By the time sales gets round to chasing these leads they have either purchased elsewhere or gone cold. The overall process of the sales can vary considerably from minutes to years in large companies enterprise sales.Marketing is often focussed on volume of leads rather than quality.

This situation often raises a gap between sales and marketing. Marketing deliver leads which sales don’t follow up, sales complain that marketing don’t deliver leads that are ready to buy or they are of poor quality. The communication between both ‘sides’ can be poor and the mechanisms to move leads between them can be basic at best, even with a decent CRM system in place.In order to start to address there issue some common definitions are required such as “What is a lead”. We will answer this question shortly.

AS mentioned, from the buyer’s perspective he does not often know or care whether he is dealing with marketing, sales or internal sales – as long as the rep can deal with his query, at that time. If a company splits the roles artificially between sales and marketing, the definitions of leads, ownership of responsibility and next actions all need to be clearly thought out. We need to define a lead, define who has responsibility and allow leads to be passed between sales and marketing. We only pass leads to marketing at a given point, and only to sales at an agreed amount of qualification.

Marketing now picks up partly qualified leads, but crucially, when do these leads get passed on to sales. We propose that there are 4 or 5 key criteria that need to be understood to count as a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). Marketing may be able to identify these criteria automatically using software like LAMP, or typically they will phone the leads up using tele-marketing humans to have a conversation with the prospect. The 5 criteria are: Correct profile company: correct industry, right size or number of employeesHave a need: recognise they have issues/problems in their business/processesUnderstand we can solver their problem: educated by collateral and marketing that we can solve their problem, not necessarily in detailWant to move forward (otherwise Nurture): if they are actively researching and moving forward they are qualified much better than those not moving forward. They should go in the Lead Nurture bucket. When they are ready to move, they can perhaps go to sales. Agreed to sales contact: these days buyers may not need or want to talk to a sales rep until well down their investigation. Forcing a contact may not help.

Lead scoring is a hot topic these days, and can be useful. If you only have 5 leads per week coming in, you probably don’t need it. But in larger operations with 100s of leads per week, it makes sense to sort the wheat form the chaff. Scoring can take place initially to feed only leads of a certain quality to marketing for initial qualification. The process is built into the marketing automation software (LAMP) and web site. Criteria such as:Job titleCompany sizePiece of collateral downloadedInteraction typeAnswers to profile questionsRecency and frequency of interactions All of these can be given a score. Scoring is not exact but a prospect with 80points is likely to be better than one with 40.

Once a lead has been passed to sales, sales need to properly qualify this lead. Well known acronyms to guide the qualification process, which can be used include BANT and MANDACT. These are good ways to MoneyArea of interestNeed ( already uncovered in MQL) DecisionAbilityCompetitionTimescaleTimescale and money are two of the key ones.

When MQL qualification is reached then the lead is passed to sales.Sales can either accept or reject the lead. If its rejected, its passed back to marketing, with a reason – usually for further qualification or timescale – nurturing.Its always clear where responsibility for the lead lies, and this can change regularly. We’ll come back to Lead nurture later, as this can become a large body of leads – those interested but no ready to move forward

So far we’ve discussed the sales process from our, the sellers’ side of the relationship.Now let’s put ourselves in the buyer’s shoesA buyer travels along the buyer’s journey as he becomes more aware. We also talk about he Awareness Cycle.

We talk about the Awareness Cycle. The buyer journeys along it and the buyer’s journey.When he starts off he is unaware of the issue he has or your proposition.

We define here the typical buying cycle:Buyers start off Unaware of their need or your propositionThey then become aware and the interested in your solution or are actively researchingEventually they can become a customer.Once a customer you can improve the relationship as they buy more or you service them betterA few, may become ex customers or ‘dead’ – and we will attempt to win them back.

The buying cycle is important – prospects start unaware , then aware, interested etc. You could have more stages – we start to refer to these as Streams. Each Stream needs a series of communications to generate interest, provide what the buyer needs to nudge him along to next Stream in the process.The biggest “pot” is unaware and this needs constant attention. There could be several Unaware streams based on Segment etc. Once Aware - there would be several aware streams base on interest. Sales process / cycle - We’ll define MQL and SQL in a minute. You could refine and have further steps – like “Proposal” in the sales cycle, but this is a good model.Key point is need methodology where sales accept or reject MQLs. (or could pass to Nurture). Marketing only pass on leads to sales when qualified, so many will reside in Nurture for some time. LAMP allows you to manage both of these cycles simultaneously.

We need to link collateral to the buyer’s stage:Awareness StageDescriptionSuggested collateralUnawareInitial contact with suspects where they are essentially unaware of your company or your proposition Whitepapers – industry news and information useful to the suspect and his roleEvents – keynote speakers/analystsAwareSuspects are now educated and aware of your proposition and have interacted with you by email, phone or web. As they are still at an early stage collateral can be very similar to Unaware stageWhite papersProduct demosEventsProduct specific/role specific brochureInterestedSuspects, may now be a prospect as they have usually interacted at least twice and may now be interested in your proposition. By now they will have been called by tele-marketingSpecial offers, trials and proof of conceptsPrice ListsCase Studies and referencesBrochures and fact sheetsUser group eventsCustomerOnce a customer a different type of communication can now be established.Now solving the problem with your productNewslettersUpsells offersEducation in use of product/serviceRenewalsLoyalty programmesUser groupsAlso recognise:Awareness StageDescriptionSuggested collateralUnawareInitial contact with suspects where they are essentially unaware of your company or your proposition Whitepapers – industry news and information useful to the suspect and his roleEvents – keynote speakers/analystsAwareSuspects are now educated and aware of your proposition and have interacted with you by email, phone or web. As they are still at an early stage collateral can be very similar to Unaware stageWhite papersProduct demosEventsProduct specific/role specific brochureInterestedSuspects, may now be a prospect as they have usually interacted at least twice and may now be interested in your proposition. By now they will have been called by tele-marketingSpecial offers, trials and proof of conceptsPrice ListsCase Studies and referencesBrochures and fact sheetsUser group eventsCustomerOnce a customer a different type of communication can now be established.Now solving the problem with your productNewslettersUpsells offersEducation in use of product/serviceRenewalsLoyalty programmesUser groups

The messages are linked to the buying cycle, a previously describedHowever, the general marketing mantra of right message……. still appliesThe challenge is still what do we say, what do we write about.This is particularly a challenge for the lead nurtures as that period of nurturing could go on for a long long time.This presentation does not discuss the content in detail, other than it should ideally be fresh and original and engage your readers. The last point about being contact centric is that the average email marketing tool operates in a batch mode – “let’s send this email to this list”.Given the sophistication of the different buyer’s stages and the need to match content to their buying cycle stage, the process must be contact centric – i.e. for Fred, where is he, what’s he done previously, and what next and when? A tool like LAMP allows you to manage this communication process in a simple but effective manner through the use of communication Streams, linked to the buying stage.

The result of all these requirements is a need to communicate regularly with prospects.Email is a key part of this process, not the only part as we shall see.Email is cheap and effective but has to be used carefully with good quality content – poor targeting and messaging is perceived as spam Also, many organisations “do” email – it’s the monthly scramble to send out a news letter or recent offer.This is really just email blasting and not part of a coherent process that needs to be thought out and careful attention given to the content.

The typical email scramble illustrated, monthly random mailshots with the latest company news, product updates, end of quarter offers etc etcAll offers go to all data or if you are lucky, there’s a split between prospects and customers – who invariably get the news letter.I’ve seen this so often, event done it myself, and occasionally we’ve all seen the “please ignore” email

In order to manage all the inevitable emails we need to have a semi-automatic process set up, that we can set up and tune and then largely forget. Marketing theory suggest we should constantly optismise and test, and if you can afford the time that’s definitely best practice,. But sometimes, especially in the SME sector, we just need to set something really good up and let it run for a few months, before we revisit it again. LAMP allows you to set up the bulk of a years campaigns in a day or two and then the system can be left alone. Ideally of course the system is refined and updated and optimised, but only when you have time. The key concept in LAMP is the idea of a Stream linked to a buying stage such as “Unaware”. Whilst you might in the future need sophisticated rules, triggers and alerts, the Stream provides a simple way of delivering regular emails of quality content to prospects. The next slide show an example of this. A Stream consists of a number of Steps, each Step being an email with a template, channel and associated content etc.Each buyer travels along a Stream until the end when it can halt , move to another or even be repeated. Each step

4 Streams Unaware – CustomerEach consisting of multiple emails spaced out over a few days . Weeks. But how does a buyer move from 1 stage to another. If he downloads one of the whitepapers, what happens.

So we need to be able to track responses and keep an eye on and call people who have downloaded, (subject to lead scoring mentioned earlier).Rapid follow up by tele-marketing is required – LAMP can provide this service if you don’t have it yourself. When they click , what happens.Physically they go to a landing page. This may have survey questions on it. After confirming their details and the questions they submit and go to the collateral they requested. (or it can be sent to them). Then several things can happen in the product:Typically, though this can be configured, a buyer will move from the Unaware to the Aware stream, by virtue of downloading the content, in this case a whitepaper in in the Unaware stream. The buyer when he interacts ( he is taken to the landing page) and downloads the collateral, in this example a “video1”, he is asked some simple survey questions on the landing page. These questions help determine information about his profile or needs. They are useful to determine the future Stream of the buyer and also provide conversational hooks for tele-marketing.Marketing automation is great, but the most sophisticated tool and set of rules, will not be as good as an intelligent human interacting, normally on the phone with a prospect. As a result of the call the tele-marketing will know what to do next – are they a longer term lead nurture, do they need a demo or a visit by sales. So the 3rd item is actually a tele-marketing call – the profile questions and download history gives the conversational hooks. LAMP really makes tele-marketing efficient to the extent that the old cold call a list is now dead.

So now we have an email marketing set of Streams with top quality content generating downloaders or leads, that are qualified by tele-marketing .

Integelligent hums are important, no matter how good the automation, scoring, Streams etc. We talek about CRm – relationship building etc, but this really only happens when humans get involved. But that’s expensive and LAMP makes that efficient.

Summary, simplified lead generation picture:Look at email centric approach – not the only one though….Data base contains our data and knowledge/intelligence – segmented , prepared for campaignEmails go out on regular basis with industry / thought leading collateral. Drip[ fed out in batches of a few 11. Easy to manage and follow up. Spreads the load. Many buyers end of at Lead Nurture When buyer interacts – telemarketing calls – qualify, probe, understand, pitch, output = accurate assessment of situation, future treatment and sales action recommendationThe result of all of this is a drip feed of regualr leads, day in day out, not in great big batches.

The detail and content of the LAMP approach varies from industry to industry and the nature of the products, But it works in many industries.

ChallengesTele-marketing needs to be geared up for small amounts of regular work – not a campaign of 5 or 10 days following up a set of leads. Tele- marketers need to be well educated in the process and your propositions to have conversations, they are not reading scripts. They need to be able to recommend sales actions and to move buyers to the correct Streams. Good data is always a benefit and that needs to be constantly worked on. We’ve mentioned the Lead Nurtures a few times already – those interested but not ready to move forward. Over time this can build and build to become a huge rump of your data and it needs attention. Just assigning call backs every month or two to tele-marketing is wastefully expensive. Streams of lead nuture collateral, similar to the normal Aware stream interspersed with tele-marketing calls will usually go a long way. However, don’t leave it to sales or things will bever happen.

The role of tele-marketing is key and LAMP improves on the usual list of campaigns or activities that a researcher has to use to make his calls. LAMP provides an optimised interface which shows the most relevant information and provides access to other supporting data if needed. The key thing is to avoid too many clicks and actions and screens and make the follow on actions very simple. There are normally 5 follow up actions to a call, once the call notes have been made:Log the call – automatic in LAMPSchedule a follow up call ( or action), pulling the call notes through for referenceSend an email, usually from a template, that might be customised. Obviously have the relevant signature loaded for this campaignCreate an opportunity – yeah it s lead! Or perhaps you’ve found some “intelligence” that can be useful in a future campaign?Change the Stream – you’ve spoken to the buyers, he’s now educated and needs a different approach than the Unaware Stream he was in. The list provision, display and workflow is also optimised in LAMP so that the researcher only calls the records he should be calling. Using a combination of scoring and list selections and presentation. Final note, you cant get away from the fact you neea good tele-marketer

The result of the LAMP process is more and better leads, more effectively and at cheaper cost. We reckon the saving of 1-2 days telemarketing cost per month will pay for LAMP. This better process can be used to reduce costs further or to increase the number and quality of leads produced.

LAMP works but its not a silver bullet as it needs:Good dataGood content collateral: Whitepapers, videos etcA competent email tool with automation and rules (LAMP) ideally included CRM functionality, or worst case linked to your own existing CRMCompetent tele-marketers

LAMP includes sophisticated email marketing, CRM and marketing automation. In addition it also provides the company or agency with the following integrated tools/functionsProject and campaign management - management of resources, costs, commissions. Hanldeo all rpoject docuemtns, email templates, signatures, scripts etc all in one place. Timesheets to mange the daily time , against multiple projects of all resources. Activity can be analysed over any time period against and campaign or project or division/client and by resource. Opportunities can have your Sales items and progress through to sales orders.

Built in processes - Many to many relationships with contacts- Single version of truth -Campaign based -Simultaneous sales and buying cycles -Opportunity management&amp; intelligence -Collateral / content and document storage -Tele-marketing efficiency -Reporting portal -

PricingWe are all used to pricing per user or sometimes on the number of emails or amount of data you have.We have this. A free trial and a free open 2 user version. Then pricing per user with reasonable limits on storage, records and emails. But we are also innovating a price per lead.In a traditional system, you might pay $100 fro 32 users or for sending 1000 emails per month. In LAMP, per lead pricing you pay nothing for 5 users, loading 10,000 records and sending 20,000 emails per month. You pay for the leads and results you get. We have a price for each click , interaction or action such as creating an opportunity. So sending 1000 emails may cost you $50.In LAMP that costs nothing. But if we expect a 1% it rate and get 10 clicks, in LAMP we would charge $5 per click.This means if you get great result, you pay a but more, poor results and the email bomber you pay a bit less. If you do nothing one month it costs you nothing.

Finally, LAMP has a comprehensive getting Started guide pop up built in which is being constantly being improved. Take the first 10 steps to get your first email out, then go back and do the next few steps in more detail to build a more sophisticated campaign and so on.Over all we try to make it easy to understand, and simple to execute. We also provide consulting services and product support to help you get going with LAMP should you need it. Some of this is free in the form of lead generation and marketing planning templates. All on the web site www.lamp-360.com Se also our online communities and forums.

16.
How to engage buyers Email/provide Collateral linked to stage in the Awareness Cycle – Whitepapers – Videos, Podcasts, Slideshows – Presentations Events etc Recognise – Each buyer’s journey needs to be completed step by step – Individuals in the same company may be at different stages of the same journey – Individuals start the buyer’s journey at different times and travel at different speeds16 www.lamp-360.com

33.
Other LAMP key features Built in processes Many to many relationships with contacts Single version of truth & integrated data Campaign based Simultaneous sales and buying cycles Opportunity management& intelligence Collateral / content and document storage Tele-marketing efficiency Reporting portal34 www.lamp-360.com